


High Magic

by ishafel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-13
Updated: 2011-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:03:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We are never so alone as we think we are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	High Magic

In the camp, the tattoo on his right arm matters more than the mark on his left, more than his parentage, more than his face. He finds peace there at first, lost among those who are left. (And there are fewer than even he had imagined, who thought he knew. There are fewer than three thousand, and many of those are not of pure blood, or even purely human blood.) It is easy to imagine dying here: this is a place for death. But when he has been there for three months, more or less, they burn Lord Voldemort's body in the exercise yard so that everyone can see. That is when it comes to him. He does not want to die. Not here, and not like this.

The air still reeks of charred flesh when he meets with Arthur Weasley and Lucius Malfoy. (These are people looking for leaders, he tells them, looking for answers. If they had been Muggleborn he might have mentioned deserts, Moses, Jesus, prophecies, light in time of darkness, the stories their enemies tell. They are all wizards and so he speaks to them of Merlin, swords and stones, ladies and lakes.) They are willing to be convinced, Arthur and Lucius, Lucius and Arthur. They are men with sons.

In the camp there is never quite enough to eat, never quite enough water to feel clean, no books, no parchment and no quills. No magic and no hope. Rumor has it things are better in the camp where they keep the women and children. Snape has no reason to believe the rumors are true, except that he knows Muggles tend to underestimate women. His father always did.

The first order of business is food. Food will make them stronger, more prepared, less desperate. The simplest thing would be to withhold food from the oldest, let them die. Many would do so voluntarily, Lucius says: what have they to live for? Snape chose Lucius because he knew he could trust him to see the shortest road most clearly. Arthur protests. They cannot buy freedom with blood, surely. (At least, not with the blood of their own. Snape chose Arthur because Arthur is representative of the moral majority. If he can be convinced-so can the others.) Snape offers a compromise.

Lucius understands at once. Lucius knows everything there is to know about black markets, prison economies, the value of desperation. Lucius has played both sides of this game. Arthur's naivety is astounding in a man who once worked at the Ministry. Snape explains, as briefly as possible; still, he makes the man blush.

"We'll have to let others in on this, of course," Lucius says, and Snape knows what he is thinking. Middle-aged men with middle-aged bodies will not tempt the guards: they will want youth and they will want beauty. This is the other thing Lucius brings-a son who is young and beautiful and absolutely loyal to his father. And if they can convince Draco Malfoy to whore for them, the Weasley boys will hardly do less.

Of course, it is left to Snape to do the pandering. He chooses one of the younger women to be Draco's first. She is soft and pale and spotty, and he does not think her capable of violence. She turns as red as Arthur when he propositions her. When she comes for Draco it is evening, nearly time for lockdown. The general consensus seems to be that he has been selected for punishment, and Snape can hear the whispers like hisses in the dark.

Finally there is silence, and then there is Lucius Malfoy in his bed with him, quick and quiet as a striking snake. Lucius presses against him, shivering despite the heat, and Snape wonders if it is fear or anger that rides him. "It will be all right," he whispers, and feels Lucius nod. His own body stirs and he suppresses it ruthlessly. After a long time, Lucius goes to sleep, his head unfortunately on Snape's arm.

There have begun to be other sounds in the darkness, and Snape pretends not to hear them. There are more than thirty men in this dormitory, and they have been six months without female company. This is the closest any of them can come to privacy: turned faces in the dark. They have all had to make their own peace with captivity.

The church bells have rung midnight when the door opens, and two figures are silhouetted in the opening. Draco and his guard. She kisses him one last time, and he lets her. Then it is black again, and there is a third body in Snape's narrow bed. Even with Lucius between them Snape can feel Draco's exultation. He is the nervy sort; any action is better than none at all. He smells of cheap perfume, and something else Snape recognizes eventually: soap. He's had a proper bath, and that does make Snape jealous.

In the morning there are eggs for breakfast, even though it isn't Sunday, and double rations of bread, and a small square of Muggle chocolate in red paper, each. Draco shoots Snape just the slightest hit of a triumphant grin, and Snape knows that the chocolate was his idea.

Afterward they stand in the corner of the exercise yard, surrounded on two sides by chain link fence topped with barbed wire, and all of them are watching Draco. He lies in the brutal July sun with his shirt off, just as the others do. He seems to be unbothered. But Arthur looks and looks away, and Lucius' eyes are stormy. Snape wonders what is that bothers them most: the string of numbers on Draco's arm; the ring of bite marks at his throat; the fact that all of his ribs are clearly visible. "He did well," Snape says as gently as he can. "It is necessary."

"So long as he didn't get the little bitch pregnant," Lucius answers, but his pride shows despite the grimness of his voice. He loves his son, which is something not even Draco would believe. After a moment he says, "They'll fight well, given adequate food and weapons. They haven't given up entirely."

"My boys will do their part." Arthur's voice is determined. He is a decent man, who has found himself in an untenable situation. It is hard to tell just what he will be capable of, if pressed. There was another son once, who crossed Arthur and died for it in the end, but Snape has never been sure if that was an accident. He has Lucius for strategy; he needs Arthur for strength.

"Which shall we start with?" he asks now, practically. It's a legitimate question: all the red heads look the same to him.

"Charlie." Lucius' words have a ring of certainty to them. Snape caught him with one of the older boys once, fucking in the dust behind a cabin. He wishes now he'd paid more attention-Bill or Charlie?

He shakes his head. "No, not Charlie. The twin--."

Arthur flinches. "Fred."

"Fred," Snape says, trying to remember what the other one's name had been. "He needs an interest."

"It will be all right," Lucius tells Arthur, with something like kindness. He turns a little, looking not at Draco but at the charred spot where Voldemort died. "There is nothing they can do to us that will make us less than who we are."

Snape thinks that they did a fine job of making Voldemort less. (Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, they had not said.)

"The king is dead," Lucius says without irony. "Long live the king." Arthur grimaces, but he does not disagree. Where they are now, they can only hope for Voldemort to come back from the dead to lead them. Snape and Lucius both sat at Voldemort's table and drank his blood, long ago. He has no right to disagree.

Snape spends six months selling other men's sons. They achieve a certain standard of living. There is enough to eat, and meat several times a week. There is enough water to wash. There are blankets, once the temperature drops. There are even books, Muggle Bibles and textbooks. Arthur has never been out of Western Europe but he learns to read Japanese; Lucius memorizes Shakespeare and quotes it at inappropriate times. The twin catches a venereal disease from one of the male guards and has to be taken out of the rotation.

Snape waits, and watches. The mark on his arm fades; the tattoo does not. Draco gains weight and muscle, running laps around the perimeter with Hufflepuffs at his heels. Bill and Charlie Weasley come to blows over Lucius. The guards grow careless, and walk among their prisoners unarmed. He tells the men he sends: ask for weapons. Ask for small things, easily concealed. Knives, guns, steel and cold iron. Do whatever they want, if you think they will supply them for you.

He has a secret, something he has kept safe since Voldemort died. (The thought of revealing it makes him both elated and sick; he has spent his life trying to end a war-now he must begin one.) He recognizes the moment when it comes: Draco brings him a sword. Snape wonders what he did to earn it.

The next afternoon, when he is sure he has the attention of both Lucius and Arthur, he opens his hand and shows them the thing that gave him hope. It is not a sliver of the True Cross, but in this place it is as valuable, perhaps more so. In this place there are no trees, there is no wood at all, only metal and plastic. In his palm is a splinter the width and length of his thumb, blackened at one end: a relic of the pyre that destroyed the Dark Lord's mortal body.

They ask him how he got it, and he tells the truth, though he is not sure they believe him. He did not do anything he has not asked their sons to do; what they do not believe is that anyone would be willing to do it with him. But he had earned and held his place in Voldemort's ranks by the work he did on his back, and he knew his own worth.

They want to know what he means to do with it. It seems too small, and too dead, to be the miracle they have been promised. It is an old spell, Snape tells them, and a chancy one, dependent not on wand waving or words or rare ingredients, but on belief-and blood.

"That makes it dark magic," Arthur says, his voice startled.

"Yes," Snape says. He does not say that it is what you do with magic that makes it dark, or that the darkest magic is done without shedding blood at all. He should not need to. Sometimes he thinks that Arthur is an idiot.

Lucius smiles a little, over Arthur's head, but sadly. He knows that need trumps morality. There were no innocents--and no idiots-in Voldemort's service. "The Muggles have machines that let them see magic in blood, Arthur," he says. "It's science."  
Lucius has only the faintest idea of what science means, but he can always cut straight to the heart. "There is magic in our blood," Snape agrees. "Just as Voldemort always said there was. It stands to reason that it can be activated. The first wandmakers did not have wands."

He tells them everything, which is difficult. He has been a double agent (and sometimes a triple one) half his life. He has never liked Arthur and he has never trusted Lucius. He would be happier by far to keep his secrets secret. But they have done everything he has asked of them, followed him blindly-and foolishly-and now they are almost to the end of the road. It is up to him to make the destination worth the journey.

The guards have grown so careless that when Snape asks for curfew to be put back three hours they do not even want to know why. His carefully prepared lies are wasted on them. He gathers his assistants and sketches out his circle on the concrete. There is no precedent for this magic without magic; he has been forced to draw on Muggle traditions. It should not matter. It is the idea that is important.

The idea, and blood. He has a knife, a cheap thing with a plastic handle, disposable and very, very sharp. He draws it quickly across his palm and closes his hand around the sliver of wood. He has never known what to pray to (he is caught between worlds, the way all halfbloods are, caught between gods) and so he prays to them all. Perhaps it is true that all gods are the same in the dark. He passes the knife, and the man on his right takes it. There are thirteen of them gathered here, and Snape is, reluctantly, playing the role of leader.

Once King Arthur had twelve knights; once Christ had twelve disciples; once Voldemort had twelve lieutenants; the men who kneel now beside Snape are not his servants, and not his friends, but they are desperate enough to follow him to the death. The bloody scrap of wood makes its way around the circle, back to his hand.

It feels smoother, heavier than he remembers, but the night is cloudy and he cannot see whether it has changed. "Lumos," he says without thinking, and flinches when he remembers. But he feels it even before he sees it. Magic. The charred piece of kindling in his hand gives off a soft, glowing white light. He is so startled he drops it.

It takes root in the concrete, and in less than a minute it grows into a tree with a trunk as wide as their circle, as tall as the sky. "Goddess," Lucius says, from his position at Snape's right hand, and there is nothing in his voice but wonder. It is not the miracle they were looking for, but it is an answer all the same. That is when Snape knows they will be free.


End file.
